Facebook CEO pledges $500M funds for health & education

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says he is donating nearly $500 million in stock to a Silicon Valley charity to focus on health and education issues.

In a note on his Facebook page, Zuckerberg wrote that he and his wife Priscilla have signed the so-called Giving Pledge, a philanthropy effort aimed at the wealthy and launched by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett a couple of years ago. The pledge involves promising to give away at least half of one’s fortune during his or her lifetime.

Zuckerberg, whose stake in vested Facebook shares is worth roughly $11 billion, announced plans in 2010 to give a $100 million gift to the beleaguered public schools of Newark, New Jersey.

Later in 2010, he joined Giving Pledge, an effort led by Microsoft founder Bill Gates and investor Warren Buffett to get the richest Americans to donate most of their wealth.

While he’s already donated funds to public schools in Newark, N.J., Zuckerberg wrote that the new donation to the Silicon Valley Community Foundation will “lay the foundation for new projects.” In particular, he writes that “together, we will look for areas in education and health to focus on next.”

Zuckerberg founded Facebook in his Harvard dorm room in 2004, turning it into the world’s most popular online social network with roughly 1 billion users. With its high-profile initial public offering in May, Facebook became the first U.S. technology company to debut with a $100 billion-plus valuation, though questions about its long-term money-making prospects have pressured share prices.